Reading Searching for Grace

A couple of weeks ago I entered and won a competition on National Radio (mostly because one of the clues was the B52’s 'Love Shack'. Man I love that song). My prize was a Book. So exciting! I imagine there are many stray books lying around the National Radio office that are looking for a home.

In order to ascertain which book would be most suitable to my Winner's Needs, I was asked what I liked to read. I replied that at present I was mostly reading biographies of women who lived in the early 19th century, thinking about the Mitford Girls, The Viceroy’s Daughters, Fortune’s Daughters and the Virginia Woolf biography I was reading earlier this year.

On Monday I was lucky enough to receive two books: the second volume of Fiona Kidman’s memoirs, and the book Searching for Grace by Carol Henderson and Heather Tovey. I picked up the book at about midday from the post office, sat down to flick through it over lunch and then spent the next four hours consuming the book as quickly as I could!

So yes, very compelling, and also one of the strangest stories I’ve ever read. It’s essentially the autobiography/biography of Heather Tovey (nee Campbell) who was born in London in 1911. From an early age the woman who was raising her (‘Mummy’) made it clear that she wasn’t her biological mother. The identity of her 'real' mother remained a secret until the early 1970s when it was confirmed that Heather was the illegitimate daughter of a very wealthy Edwardian society lady, Lady Grace Weigall. Grace had inveigled herself, unacknowledged, into Heather’s life from about the age of seven and actively interfered with aspects of her life through Heather’s guardian, Doctor Leonard Boys. This interference included not only keeping Heather’s mother’s identity a mystery, but also potentially pressing charges againts the man that Heather eloped, and later emigrated with (Gordon Tovey, a well-known NZ arts figure).

I simply cannot unpick the whole sordid tangle for you here. It’s complicated and fascinating. And complicated. And FASCINATING.

When I first flicked through, I thought the book was going to a misery memoir. Gretchen wrote about reading misery memoirs as an attempt to make herself feel more spiritual which grosses me out, but stoked to say, Searching for Grace is much more than a mere misery memoir. It is a rather strange book, written as it is by two women (Heather and her daughter Carol) over a period of about 20-odd years. There are periodic diversions into spiritual matters (Carol feels her mother Heather’s spirit while she’s doing the dishes) and a number of poems about being abandoned that I think maybe the book could have lived without. I have an aversion to most poetry though, so take with a grain of salt, they could be amazing. Also: Gordon Tovey’s affairs and Heather’s acceptance of the Other Women? Priscilla’s terrible life? Carol watching her mother become increasingly depressed after the Revelations and then Heather’s deterioration through Alzheimers? This book  has everything, including a description of the female Victorian dressing process.

The most outstanding thing about the book was that it was an antidote to all the romanticised Edwardian-lady biographies that I’ve been reading. Those books put the figures they’re written about on a pedestal, and will list all of their peccadilloes with no eye to the real emotional consequences of the subject’s actions. Searching for Grace is rather a book OF consequences: the legacy left by the actions of a particular group of wealthy and privileged upper class English folk at a particular time in history. But it’s also a very unique and personal history. Microcosm and macrocosm in one, people!

In conclusion: Dude, you should totally read it. The prose will not make you wet your pants with excitement but the convoluted nature of the histories more than make up for this. You’ll never be able to read an Edwardian ladies bio in the same way again.